Windows 10 Tutorials 56 – Enable or Disable Disk Write Protection

Welcome to our series of tutorials on the Microsoft Windows 10 that help you understand the features of the upcoming Windows 10.

This tutorial will show you how to use Microsoft Diskpart feature to enable or disable write protection on a hard drive for all users in Windows 10.

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This method will also work for older versions of Windows like Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Write protection (read-only) on a disk prevents anyone from intentionally or accidentally changing its contents. This effectively means you cannot use the drive in any sort of meaningful way.

Open up the elevated command prompt (command prompt with administrator privileges)

  1. Type diskpart and press Enter.
  2. Type list disk and press Enter.
  3. Note the number next to the disc you want to enable or disable write protection for. It would read like this disk 1
  4. Now type select disk # where # is the number you noted in step abovetutorial546-dos
  5. To enable write protection for the disk type: attributes disk set readonly
  6. To disable write protection for the disk type: attributes disk clear readonly

NOTE: You can’t write protect the Windows drive.

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6 thoughts on “Windows 10 Tutorials 56 – Enable or Disable Disk Write Protection”

  1. Can’t believe it still needs to use dos prompt to complete this simple task. Should just set it in the property of the hard disk.

    Reply
  2. Does not work in Win 10, disc is still write protected, could it be how you exit diskpart ? There were no instructions on this, I just clicked on the x in top right corner.

    Reply
  3. Does not work:
    Copyright (C) 1999-2013 Microsoft Corporation.
    On computer: XXXXXLP002

    DISKPART> list disk

    Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
    ——– ————- ——- ——- — —
    Disk 0 Online 931 GB 842 MB *
    Disk 1 Online 29 GB 0 B
    Disk 2 No Media 0 B 0 B
    Disk 3 Online 1862 GB 0 B

    DISKPART> select disk 1

    Disk 1 is now the selected disk.

    DISKPART> attributes disk
    Current Read-only State : Yes
    Read-only : No
    Boot Disk : No
    Pagefile Disk : No
    Hibernation File Disk : No
    Crashdump Disk : No
    Clustered Disk : No

    DISKPART> attributes disk clear readonly

    Disk attributes cleared successfully.

    DISKPART> attributes disk
    Current Read-only State : Yes
    Read-only : No
    Boot Disk : No
    Pagefile Disk : No
    Hibernation File Disk : No
    Crashdump Disk : No
    Clustered Disk : No

    DISKPART>

    Reply

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